Pinturas

Today we finished painting the upstairs walls. (Except, of course, for the marathon “touch up” session and trim work still to come.)

We celebrated by going to Home Depot and then coming home to fix the sump pump.

Drywall was delivered on December 1. Installation began on December 5, with joint compound applied the next day. Then the real mess started: Sanding. Igor was at it until December 13.

At my insistence, Matt got bids from professional painters. One came in at $3,200, one at $5,000 and another bidder required Matt to answer a long list of questions, making that vendor too much work to work with.

Armed with this information, El Jefe handed me a paint brush on December 21. Before we could begin to apply primer, however, we had to clean up the drywall dust with our “enhanced” shop vac.

Today marked the tenth day in a row that Matt painted (13 total for him, 11 for me). The paint tally is 11 gallons of Valspar primer from Lowe’s and 25 gallons of low- or no-VOC paint from Sherwin Williams.

In the great room, we used five gallons of Aura White on the ceilings and front and back walls, five gallons of Windy Blue on the side wall, heading down the stairs into what we are now calling the suite (sweet!), with accent walls of Turkish Coffee.


Matt and I both independently came to the conclusion that the accent walls should be deep brown. My inspiration was our existing Bisazza glass tile fireplace hearth, the Mini Clubman and my favorite flavor of water by Metromint®.

Renovation tips:

1. Buy no-VOC (or at least low-VOC) paints to make the newly decorated rooms instantly usable (no “new” smell). What a difference from the toxic paints professionally applied to our interior in 2000, which were so headache-inducing we had to sleep in the downstairs storage area (soon to be a bathroom) for several nights!



2. Use the right tools. I love our unfinished wood handle Purdy cut in brushes, our Teflon-coated roller pan, my decades-old favorite painting shirt and even the Bil-Jax scaffolding from Taylor Rental.



3. Be sure to factor in the time needed at both ends: Prep and clean-up. (I like using an official paint can opener and an old comb for cleaning bristles.)



4. Quit while you are ahead. Yesterday, Matt didn’t, and then stepped from the ladder into a pan full of paint in a fit of fatigue-induced delirium caused by working about 11 hours.